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- Category: November 2018
New Health Canada figures say Canadians over 25 smoked more tobacco and cannabis last year than they did two years before.
Health Canada closely tracks trends in tobacco, alcohol and drug use among Canadians 15 and older to help develop policies and programs.
The prevalence of cigarette smoking among those 25 and up was 16 per cent in 2017, an increase from 13 per cent two years earlier. And 13 per cent of people aged 25 or older reported having used cannabis in the last year, up from 10 per cent in 2015.
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- Category: September 2018
In a recent letter to the Chicago Sun-Times, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) takes issue with my argumentthat new FDA restrictions on e-cigarettes could deter smokers from switching to vaping, resulting in more tobacco-related deaths than would otherwise occur. "Mr. Sullum needs to check his facts," Durbin says, claiming that e-cigarettes, on balance, lead to more rather than less smoking. That conclusion is based on some highly implausible assumptions.
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- Category: November 2018
Even as more and more American quit smoking cigarettes, individuals with serious psychological distress (SPD) are much less likely to extinguish their habit. A new study [...] found that individuals with mental health problems quit cigarettes at half the rate of those without psychological distress. "Overall, tobacco cessation programs have been very successful, but our research suggests that people with mental health problems have not benefitted from these," said Renee Goodwin [...] senior author.
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- Category: September 2018
There’s a war on nicotine. And just like the War on Drugs in general, it cannot be won. We will never live in a world where nicotine isn’t used by millions.
A nicotine-free world is as unobtainable as one without caffeine or heroin. Why? Because people have always needed and loved drugs–for recreational, spiritual and medicinal purposes. And in the 21st century, drugs are never more than a couple of clicks away, through legal prescriptions or illicit markets.
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- Category: November 2018
Children are using e-cigarettes at epidemic levels — and the Food and Drug Administration is going into crisis mode to address the problem.
The FDA announced Tuesday it will unveil “forceful” steps in mid-November to cut down on youth use of e-cigarettes, potentially including increased enforcement of identification and age verification requirements. This comes after the agency issued a call to action in September to address the “alarming increase in youth use of e-cigarettes” and threatened to ban all flavored e-cigarettes.
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- Category: September 2018
Four Hong Kong medical groups have banded together to step up calls for a total ban on e-cigarettes following a 55 per cent rise in the proportion of Primary Two to Four pupils trying the products. The Council on Smoking and Health, Federation of Medical Societies, Medical Association and Dental Association on Thursday also cautioned that e-cigarettes could help youngsters abuse other drugs.
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- Category: November 2018
Thailand is hoping to become the first country in Asia to legalize medical marijuana and tap into the burgeoning cannabis market, Agence France-Presse reports.
According to a Thai official, a draft bill now under consideration proposes allowing marijuana for medicinal purposes, a considerable change in a country with tough drug trafficking laws.
Jet Sirathraanon, the pubic health committee chair of Thailand’s National Legislative Assembly, emphasized that marijuana would be legal “for medication only, not for recreation.” [...]
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- Category: September 2018
Ontario residents will be able to smoke recreational cannabis wherever the smoking of tobacco is permitted, the Progressive Conservative government said Wednesday, loosening rules established by the previous Liberal regime.
The government will also not put a cap on pot shops when it starts licensing and regulating the province's private cannabis retail marketplace, and municipalities will have until January to opt out of hosting the stores.
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- Category: November 2018
While cigarette prices will go up, it will not be so drastic as to make smokers turn to illicit cigarettes to satisfy their addiction, says Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad.
"In our assessment, we are not only looking at increasing duties but also the effect of taxation on illicit cigarettes.
"The lower income group will turn to illicit cigarattes if prices go up to a level where it becomes unaffordable to them," he said when replying a supplementary question raised by Wong Chen (PH-Subang) in Parliament on Wednesday (Oct 31).
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- Category: September 2018
British tobacco company Imperial Brands aims to launch Nixx, a tobacco-infused e-cigarette, during the first part of 2019, its chief executive said on Tuesday, as the company bolsters its portfolio of cigarette alternatives.
Nixx could be launched around the same time as Imperial’s tobacco heating device Pulze but might come earlier, CEO Alison Cooper told Reuters before a capital markets day in London where Imperial will discuss its “next-generation products”.
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- Category: November 2018
Most research points to cigarette smoke, not nicotine, as being the primary contributor to cancer among smokers. However, although most experts agree that nicotine does not directly cause cancer, some research suggests that nicotine may lead to a type of DNA damage that increases the risk of cancer. Research from 2015 reported in the Indian Journal of Medical and Paediatric Oncology suggests that nicotine may increase the risk of cancer because it might damage DNA, initiate cancer and cause it to progress faster, and interact with cancer-causing chemicals.
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- Category: September 2018
The same drug combination behind July's outbreak of overdoses — fentanyl and a synthetic cannabinoid, commonly known as "K2" — was found in a sample of the drug that health officials suspected caused another overdose spike over the weekend.
Health officials said the combination turned up in a sample collected from Hahnemann University Hospital on Friday — at the beginning of a surge that would eventually sicken at least 110 people and kill 7 around the city.
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- Category: November 2018
E-cigarettes should not be recommended for smoking cessation purposes as they increase the risk of heart attack, a study has warned.
Daily e-cigarette users were almost twice as likely to have a heart attack compared with those who had never used e-cigarettes, according to the research.
The findings come after a Government report released in August recommended that patients should switch to e-cigarettes if it was not possible to quit smoking altogether.
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- Category: September 2018
Despite the Centre’s advisory issued last month asking the States to stop the sale of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) which use a nicotine-laced liquid, the Rajasthan government is yet to take action to protect the adolescents and youths against nicotine addiction. The sale of e-cigarettes continues unabated in the State. The Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare had asked all States in an advisory issued on August 28 that the ENDS, [...] were not sold, manufactured, distributed, traded, imported and advertised in any manner.
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- Category: September 2018
This will be the first time that international campaigners and leaders of the vaping industry join forces to reform discordant global health policies. Organisations from across North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia have signed the UK Vaping Industry Association’s call to action.
The WHO’s tobacco control group will be meeting at the 8th session of its Conference of the Parties (COP8) in Geneva (1-6 October) to explore international guidance on Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (aka vaping products/e-cigarettes).
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- Category: September 2018
E-cigarettes have been marketed as the new, safer way to smoke. But scientists say they don't know enough about the long-term health hazards. E-cigarettes may not be as safe as we've been led to believe. In September, Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb sounded the alarm about what he called an "epidemic" of underage e-cigarette use. Over the past several months, the FDA has issued warnings and citations to more than 1,300 stores for selling e-cigarettes to underage users.
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- Category: September 2018
The fact that Switzerland has yet to have ratified the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and is hosting its conference is shameful, a top WHO official has declared.
“I think this is more of a shame than a problem that Switzerland is not party to the treaty, as this is all about protecting the public health of the population,” the head of the FCTC Secretariat, Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, told reporters at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva [...]
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- Category: September 2018
During the 2018 Concordia Annual Summit, taking place in September 24 & 25 in New York, André Calantzopoulos, CEO of Philip Morris International, delivered a speech highlighting the need to have a dialogue between the industry, leaders, policy-makers, scientists, medical, and public health professionals in order to provide the 1.1 billion people who smoke with better alternatives to cigarettes.
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- Category: September 2018
The Algoma Public Health (APH) board of directors, [...] written concern to the Ontario government over sales to adolescents of electronic cigarettes (also known as e-cigarettes) in the province.
The letter will be forwarded to the Ontario Minister of Health and to MPPs (including Sault MPP Ross Romano), recommending the province retain sections of Ontario’s Smoke-Free Ontario Act to prohibit the display and promotion of vapour products in stores which would encourage the purchase and use of e-cigarettes.
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- Category: September 2018
According to cannabis industry experts, it’s very likely that the country’s largest tobacco companies will get into the marijuana business, in some way, when it is possible. The question becomes how much control these corporate giants will have over the industry, what they will do to marijuana products and how these changes will occur.
For decades, companies like Phillip Morris have wanted to get in on the marijuana action. [...]